Month: February 2017

As I left the venue last night full of happiness an overwhelming sense of community, I noticed a straggler from the main room’s show (some country musician was playing) in a sweatshirt with a tattered American flag printed on the back with ‘Trump’ written across it. I couldn’t help but think: did they have any idea the level of unapologetic queerness that was existing in the same building? I don’t think there could have been two more opposite demographics there last night, but I’m willing to bet so much money that the people in attendance at 4th Curtis’s album release show in The Entry had way more fun. Accompanied by local favs Ahem, Tony Peachka, and Lydia Liza, 4th Curtis succeeded in throwing the biggest queer-friendly party in The Entry since PWR BTTM in celebration of their debut album I Won The Pageant.

Unfortunately, I missed a majority of Ahem’s set, although the last few songs they did brought the same energy I remember seeing them with before. I am a big fan of their bassist, Sam Stahlmann, and her work with She Rock She Rock and other Minneapolis bands – cool lady. The room would fill up much more throughout the night, but those who were there during Ahem were enjoying themselves.

Next up was Tony Peachka. Ah, Tony, how I love you. I haven’t seen these beloved “clog-wavers” play in quite some time, but they never ever disappoint, in fact, I think I love them even more now. Tony drew some wild dancers to the front of the pit, flailing limbs, toothy smiles and all. Mid-set, Melissa gave the crowd a fare warning regarding the t.v. show Gossip Girl saying, “don’t let that be your only sex education!” The crowd lovingly sang along to favorites like “NYE”, “Dirt”, and “Knees”. Right before their last song, a fan screamed “Creeping Charlie!” and Tony happily broke into the guaranteed mosh-starter.

Lydia Liza took the stage next with her friend Evan Slack and they jumped right into an old Bomba De Luz song. After a brief intermission to prevent a supra-ventricular tachycardia episode and Evan playing some jazzy tunes for the crowd, Lydia was back. She made a joke about having enough time left in their set to redeem herself, but believe me, she had never lost anything with the audience; there was so much love for Lydia and her angel-goddess voice. She professed her love for Laura Marling before she taught everyone the chorus to “Howl At The Moon” and closed the set in a big sing-a-long of one of my favorites. (let it be known that I already knew every word to “Howl At The moon” and can scream-sing the Current studio live version pretty well in the car).

4TH CURTIS!!!! The self proclaimed “scrappy gay cripplepunk” band has been making waves, being of mine and many other’s knowledge, as the only all-trans band in Minneapolis currently. After their first song, “Nobody’s Listening”, the band introduced each member, Lex Noens, Ty Gale, and Maddie Morley, with the funniest little intros; they had the crowd erupting. Based on the amount of dancing and scream-singing, “Anjali” was an obvious favorite, also my personal fav off I Won The Pageant. I want to give a shout out to Ty and Maddie for their lip-syncing and pantomiming of the lyrics throughout the entire set – love it.

Halfway through, there was a little skit the introduced the song “Chicken” involving a grocery bagged filled with tin foil-wrapped fried chicken; some was eaten, some was thrown into the crowd, and some was regretfully spit into Tony Peachka’s set-list because they “didn’t calculate for chewing time!” 4th Curtis closed the night with an oldie but goodie of theirs, “Hercule”. The audience was singing along and dancing, there was laughter and smiling, Ty’s shirt came off, pageant sashes on; it was a beautiful sight and space that I’m happy to have been a part of.

I recently spoke with three members of the local psych rock band, The Everett Interpretation (fka PTSTD): Joshua Wentland, Teagan Devoe, and Austin Lombardo. THEIR BRAND NEW ALBUM, TangerineScreams, just came out on February 10th with a rock show listening party the following day. We shared a lot of laughs, and a lot of *record scratch* “Don’t put that in there!” moments, but overall their views on making music and living in the world are pretty chill. Here’s what they had to say:

Maia Jacobson: How long have each of you been making music?

Austin Lombardo: I’ve been making music since I was about ten, and making music with these two since I was seventeen.

Teagan Devoe: I started playing violin when I was five or six, and I started playing with these guys at the same time he [Lombardo] said. . .I mean it’s all connected!

Joshua Wentland: I started playing piano when I was. . .I wanna say like third grade or something. Then I was a drummer in seventh grade. . . ? Yeah! I was playing with you in that band for awhile freshman year!

Devoe: Oh yeah! That was so fun.

Wentland: That was so cool.

Devoe: what’d we cover like Beethoven symphonies, like kinda funky or something!

Wentland: and we played for that guy and he was like *some surprised gesture, inducing laughter from everyone* . . .But yeah, I’ve been playing with this band since I was eighteen actually, because I joined late.

Jacobson: What was the intentions of starting this band, The Everett Interpretation?

Wentland: I wasn’t there –

Devoe: Well, we started it junior year just because we wanted to make like a ska-punk band, I’m pretty sure.

Jacobson: really?

Lombardo: It’s gone through a lot of different phases. . .

Wentland: I remember when I joined, specifically, was when it started to become a psych rock band, right?

Devoe: that was when we were writing everything, and starting to put our songs together.

Lombardo: That was the biggest step forward, was when we decided to become a psych rock band. I was the drummer when we started writing the album, and then I stopped being the drummer, and Josh became the drummer. Then a few months later, right after they finished recording the album, I joined as the guitarist.

Jacobson: So, the shift from ska-punk to psych rock, what was the decision or motive behind that?

*laughter from band*

Devoe: I don’t think it was really a decision, we were just listening to a lot of psychedelic music. . .

Lombardo: I wasn’t in the band at the time, but I was all friends with these guys, we were all hanging out together. We started getting into The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Soft Machine

Devoe: all the oldies. Late sixties stuff.

Lombardo: The Pretty Things. . .All the stuff that will make you change your mind about music.

Wentland: And I had always been into that stuff, so when you guys asked me to be in a psych rock band, I was like, “yes!”

Lombardo: Yeah, Joshie was super excited.

Wentland: I was like, “that’s my jam, I can play those drums!”

Jacobson: What piqued the interest in psych rock to begin with? I mean, you [Wentland] were already interested in it, but it’s not something that a lot of young people nowadays listen to.

*laughter*

Devoe: probably. . .psychedelic. . .drugs. . .

*more laughter*

Wentland: that further influenced me!

*still more laughing*

Devoe: yeah, we just got into that and then were like, “oh, there’s all this music that goes along with it. That’s so helpful.” And then we were like, “This music sounds very good. We should make music that sounds like this.” And that’s all we’re trying to do!

Wentland: yeah, so goes the tale!

Jacobson: Tell me about writing the album.

Wentland: There were a lot of separate sections that got brought in

Devoe: People would write songs, and then contribute littler parts-

Wentland: Or like, wasn’t “Laniakea” one of Luca’s songs that he was like, “let’s make this one of these!”

Devoe: yeah, yeah.

Wentland: and “Farm Animals Scream and Chant” and “10,000 Leagues [Into my Seat]” those were old tunes, right?

Lombardo: People would write songs, and one of the songs was actually on one of Teagan’s albums that he released, probably like a year. . or six months before. . .

Devoe: – we even started writing it. We just kind of figured out how to make them fit together. Or find sound effects that would make them go together so that we could make it all one thing.

Wentland: And really we would just jam a lot on them [the songs]. I changed drum parts so much on every song –

Devoe: the way that we play it now, or live, is different than the way we play it on the album even.

Lombardo: We wanted it to be as cohesive as possible, especially since it’s the side A, side B format.

Wentland: it’s kind of composed like songs with interludes, cause you can definitely tell when a theme that’s repeating ends and just becomes something that happens for a bit. It’s kind of like, I don’t know. . .I wanna say “Forever Dolphin Love” does that, where it’s just kind of guitar noises and then it suddenly fades in and it’s a new song.

Lombardo: it’s also a lot instrumental.

Devoe: yeah, it’s mostly instrumental.

Wentland: It’s like 90% instrumental!

Jacobson: So browsing the released singles, and the song titles, I noticed a theme of animals and animal noises. And then the dog and cat in the music video [for “Laniakea”], was that a purposeful theme?

Wentland: Oh wow. . .There’s nothing that correlates there.

Devoe: no, that dog just happened to be there when we filmed. Me and my girlfriend are fostering that dog. . .

Devoe: Impeach him too. And impeach everybody. Or just man the barricades. We’re all about revolution.

Lombardo: you know, the VP along with eight cabinet members can overthrow the president, it’s true. That’s not fake news, that’s a real fact.

Wentland: good luck getting through to them all. Unfortunately, the American political system is corrupt and dangerous., and there’s not much I can do about it.

Lombardo: Just go to protests! Anyone who thinks – this is for the recording! – if anyone thinks that protesting doesn’t do any good it’s not true, it does do good, and at the very least, it makes people think! Protesting is the first step in changing things.

Jacobson: That’s all I have for questions, anything else you want to add?

Lombardo: make sure to put in the article that we are definitely against homophobia in the music industry and Migos can f*** off because they’re homophobic. . .And shout out to R. Stevie Moore.